The Apple Watch can detect hypertension and sleep apnea, a new study suggests

[1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.withings.w...

And the Apple watch is a productive and convenient item to have in many people's lives. I have a series 2 and easily get 2 days of battery life. Apparently the series 3s can get 3 days.

For me at least, 1 week battery life is in some ways worse. It means that I will not charge it regularly, and it will likely die when I want to use it. Right now I never think about the battery on my Apple Watch, and just charge it when taking a shower in the morning.

I own a Pace and I am pretty happy with it. Not a complete smartwatch but has all the important features for me: always on screen, stylish, acceptable battery, activity tracking and notifications.

First, the Apple Watch easily lasts at least two days with headroom. Second, most of those extra hardware features — which you essentially dismiss outright — directly support what is likely the largest selling point and driver of demand: fitness tracking.

To be honest, at this point, the Apple Watch is to a wristwatch what the iPhone is to a traditional cellphone. Arguing that it’s not the best (or even a particularly good) timekeeping device isn’t particularly compelling, because such functions are secondary or even tertiary uses of the device. It’s about as silly as reviewing smartphones solely on their telecommunications stack, which is likely amongst the least-used features of a modern smartphone.

It’s fine if you really just want a timekeeping device, but your criticisms are going to go over about as well as someone wishing for a return of the Nokia candybar days.

I too had a Pebble Time and while that lasted seemingly forever, I'm very very happy with the Series 3's battery life and charge time.

I'm using AutoSleep, but it seems to really overestimate the time I'm actually asleep, and as far as I can tell it doesn't take into account tossing/turning during the night (either that, or I'm getting way better sleep than I think I'm getting).

And I can leave my phone in my pocket and still not miss anything important. Improved focus.

And I don't have to put my phone under my freaking pillow to get my alarm to go off at the right time.

And I also have a night-light on my wrist, which is super useful when I gotta get up and take a pee or something.

Only need to take it off when I wake up for about half an hour. While I shower and what not. Works for me.

I don't know how much useful information you can get from the variability of a metric you only sample every 5 minutes.

A: Drop it and measure how long it takes to hit the ground.

1. The extremely lucrative market of personal data

2. Their continued collection of such personal data

Yet.

What is the common root cause of error? Inaccuracies in measurement or the model classifying data incorrectly?

  https://a16z.com/2016/10/20/cardiogram/

  https://homebrewvc.tumblr.com/post/152080260668/your-heart-beats-102000-times-a-day-cardiogram

I agree. Good thing I didn't say that :) My comment implied exactly what you wrote, that the machinery will get smaller, and machine learning will be able to make more accurate predictions from a more limited data set. Although, if we consider that the Apple Watch will be strapped to your wrist for 16 hours a day, it might actually turn out to be an expanded data set, but a smaller number of sources.

> I see this kind of confusion a lot, where "machine learning" is mistakenly used to mean obsoleting sensor data instead of obsoleting the hardcoded processing of said data.

I believe that's a misinterpretation on your part. I haven't seen anyone claim that machine learning doesn't require data from sensors.

You've misinterpreted my comment. I didn't claim sensors weren't required. I said that it's a fallacy to claim that the current diagnostic equipment is required. There are sensors on smart watches. Cardiogram is using data from those sensors.

> This kind of procedures are not used because "doctors are old and non-tech people", it's because it's not working.

It's not working yet (at least not enough to make a 100% accurate diagnosis). No one claimed it was. I hate to break it to you, but the equipment currently used in sleep studies isn't 100% accurate either. Neither is the human interpretation made by sleep doctors. However, to say that doctors are laughing it off makes those doctors look stupid, not Cardiogram. Based on the studies they've run so far, it's not hard to envision a future where smart watches and apps will replace a large percentage of doctors whose main source of income is sleep studies.

> Sure, apps and smart devices could replace some day those devices but they need more and accurate sensors. Extrapolation of data from a good-enough pulse rate sensor it's not a replacement.

Your claim seems to be that sleep doctors need input from a large number of sensors, so it can't be possible to make a diagnosis from a single heart rate sensor. It would appear that Cardiogram has presented evidence to the contrary:

https://blog.cardiogr.am/screening-for-hypertension-and-slee...

If you disagree, make a specific criticism of their evidence.

This isn't the first time or the last time that computers have been able to find patterns in much simpler measurements simply because they're not human. A similar example, although not quite as advanced, is the ability for a computer to extract sound information from a black and white video. Computers have been able to recreate sounds from behind double-paned glass by analyzing vibrations captured through videos. Humans have had to rely on various arrays of lasers, sonar, and other directional instruments to get 1/10th of the accuracy that a computer algorithm has been able to achieve from a simple, low-quality video camera. The point is that more machines and sensors doesn't always equal a better diagnosis. Better analysis of existing sensors and tech, even if it seems to be lower fidelity, can actually yield more accurate results.

Or don't do it, maybe you'll develop cancer and not find out until it's too late!

EDIT: It's also free to go to the doctors in Australia so at least go once a year and do your routine bloods. Abnormalities can catch things before they progress too far that you have worse outcomes. You're paying for Medicare, use it! :)

A bloke my sister knows (she's a nurse), was diagnosed with 'hypertension not otherwise specified', at the ripe old age of 31. But they didn't catch it early because he 'felt fine'. He wasn't overweight unhealthy. But he needs new kidneys now!

It's misinformation to say otherwise. I mean, I live in Australia, where you can visit the doctor for free, so it's like, no skin off our back to go and see one once or twice a year.

EDIT: Also, I have hypertension AND sleep apnea. I am overweight. It is most likely the cause, though we do have a history of high blood pressure in the family so until I drop 20% of my weight I'm not going to know for sure. I don't disagree with that you need to look after yourself physically and be glad if you don't have any other illness that ain't your goddamn fault.

Otherwise you might find yourself on a slippery slope where you start implying that cancer sufferers brought it on themselves, etc.

Wilber’s book, about his wife who died of cancer, offers a powerful perspective that’s also grounded in mindfulness and explicitly discusses this topic and how to approach it more sensitively.

Also here in the Netherlands we have healthcare. I'd rather see these emerging devices offer good warnings to go see a doctor then people not going at all or going to often for every little thing that they feel and googled on the internet because they are to unsure.

Even just having them get in a car and go to their GP, or increase their stress levels, have the potential to cause harm. It may be an exceedingly low risk, but applied to a large enough number of people and it starts adding up. When applied to conditions that not everyone has, this can easily tilt the balance.

Consider a hypothetical condition and a population of 1000000. If 1% has the condition at any one time, and the accuracy of the test is 97%, then 10,000 should have the condition. Of those we'd expect 9,700 to get the correct diagnosis; 300 would remain undiagnosed; But 3% of those who don't have the condition - an additional 29,700 - will be wrongly diagnosed.

Let's say this is a condition where 10% would die untreated without this new intervention, it'd be tempting to suggest we've saved 970 people. But early detection might not make that much of a difference - for many things the most severe cases will be noticed anyway and/or late detection is still sufficient to save the patient.

Let's assume for this hypothetical condition, earlier detection will save 10% more of those. In the above that'd save 97 people. Awesome. But lets say it causes 10% more of the undiagnosed ones to die because they wait longer. That's 3 more dead. So net 94?

But if only 0.33% of those wrongfully diagnosed end up dying as the result of the misdiagnosis, be it car crashes on the way to the GP, or the visit leading to a follow up error leading to an intervention that is generally but not always safe, then the wrongful diagnosis would kill 98 people.

I'm not saying that would be the case here. But it's an illustration of why it is important to consider not how many problems are detected, but what benefits early detection gives vs. the cost of wrongly diagnosing people, even when it seems benign enough (just another test, and they'll confirm it was a mistake?)

E.g. there's been pushback against large scale breast cancer screening for this very reason: They're very successful at finding cancer early, but most gets found eventually anyway, and the improvement in long term survival rates from the earlier detection is reasonably small.

Couple this with low overall rates of occurrence across the total population at any given point in time (cancer rates look high when considering "will X get cancer at some point in their life?", but most people will be free of cancer at any given single point in their life; even most people who have had cancer), and the impact of false positives and potential health implications of a (very small but still existent) risk involved in even something "simple" like a biopsy, and it's unclear if large scale screening is ethical (over general populations; screening of groups with sufficiently high risk factors is another matter entirely).